


Broken Things

by Katie_65



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:21:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26886544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katie_65/pseuds/Katie_65
Summary: CW: mentions of suicideKohaku seeks out Sesshomaru, a broken boy then a broken man.
Relationships: Kohaku/Sesshoumaru (InuYasha)
Kudos: 13





	Broken Things

**Author's Note:**

> So sorry for this. 
> 
> Seriously tho: content warning: mention of suicide and rough sex. Implied sess/Rin

The first time Kohaku came to him it was for protection. A broken boy, Sesshoumaru thought, as he watched him sleep next to Rin. The sour tang of tears reached his nose but it was impossible to tell whom they were from. Rin, he knew, was prone to nightmares. Often she would cry out in her sleep. Haunted by demons he could never hope to destroy. He never remembered her tears though. 

He knew some of how Kohaku had come to be. Dead and broken. Shards of a tale woven together by his half-brother and Kagura and Rin’s telling. Half of the last of the demon slayers, he had destroyed the rest with his own hand. He murdered his family and comrades under Naraku’s influence. It was the jewel shard he carried that tethered him to the world of the living. His will was not his own, but Naraku’s cruelty knew no bounds, leaving him with the memories of his betrayal. 

Sesshoumaru had thought, until that day, that he would be able to pull the boy back from death. Tenseiga’s dull blade could heal his body. It had healed Rin’s mind as well hadn’t it? When the girl had found him she was mute and just as broken as Kohaku. 

But his mother had ended that fantasy. Once again his father’s legacy failed him. 

“Did you think you were a God?” 

Perhaps he had begun to think his power over death was omnipotent, but thrice a failure he held that illusion no more. 

He would slay Naraku. That, at least, was unquestionable. The jewel needed to be hole and the broken boy would die. It would be a mercy. It would be the only relief he could have from the shadow of himself that plagued him. The unfairness of that prospect grated on his nerves. 

Snarling and teeth bared he looked toward the sleeping broken boy who looked back at him with desperate dead eyes. 

And Sesshoumaru could do nothing. 

Years later, after Naraku, after Kohaku was given life once more, as Sesshoumaru prowled the country side moving from one war torn battlefield to another his wanderings were interrupted when Kohaku threw himself at the daiyoukai’s feet begging for training. 

“No.” Sesshoumaru side stepped him and went about his way. 

Again and again the broken boy, a broken young man now, would throw himself in the way and beg for training that Sesshoumaru denied. It was never training he sought. It was purpose. And Sesshoumaru had none to give. 

His half-brother and the other half of the remaining taijiya cornered him on a visit with Rin. 

“Lord Sesshoumaru, please, he needs something, anything, to keep him busy.” 

“The kid respects you Sesshoumaru. We ain’t askin a lot. Just teach him how to use a sword or somethin’” 

But, Sesshoumaru didn’t need followers. What he had sought before Naraku was power, dynasty, legacy, rule. His father had left him a kingdom. A kingdom of cowards and weak fools. Those he didn’t kill for their betrayal upon his father’s death he dismissed long ago. What good was a kingdom or power of it was inherited? He had sought his father’s fang, sought to use the power of it to further his own but that too would have been a borrowed strength. It took him a small eternity to learn that lesson. 

He had his own power now, almost surpassing even his mother. Besides a kingdom was another of his father’s erroneous attempts at mimicking humanity. Father had always prized human trapping, compassion, love, morality. Sesshoumaru always felt his great and terrible father’s downfall had been, at least in part, his self loathing. They were demons, great, mighty beasts. They were creatures of power, the will of the land itself. What need had they for human hearts? 

He understood father more now than ever. Compassion haunted him when he looked into the once dead man’s eyes. Love twisted him when he heard Rin’s melodic laughter. Morality stayed his hand when he would have killed his own half-brother. 

“No.” Sesshoumaru told them then walked away. He had no purpose to give Kohaku because he had none of his own. 

When Kohaku came to him for help slaying a demon that had been spiriting away young women though, he acquiesced. Then the next time and the next and the next. 

And when the demons were dead he would watch Kohaku wash the blood off his hands until they were raw. Scrubbing them in the closest stream like a prayer. 

Years later still Kohaku came to him again. 

Sesshoumaru had sent Jaken on some errand hoping for a little peace. The late autumn chill whispered of winters arrivals along the daiyoukai’s skin. Armor, clothes and swords discarded, he stood to the waist in a stream washing the grime of the day away enjoying the way the almost frozen water made his stomach clench tight. The last of the cicadas had gone to their slumber and Sesshoumaru was grateful. The silence of twilight reflected the silence in his mind. 

Eyes narrowed as he caught a scent on the wind, or more accurately the lack thereof. It was a taijia trick. A smoke screen they employed to disguise themselves from the keen noses of demons of the canine variety. Wringing the water from his hair he side stepped just in time for the kusarigama to scream through the air just past his ear. 

Surprised, but never off guard, he caught the chain and with a yank Kohaku came tumbling from his perch. He avoided the return trip with a leap that landed him crouching on the shore. Across the clearing Kohaku landed in a crouch mimicking his own. 

“What is the meaning of this?” Sesshoumaru took a step toward the taijiya. With a cry Kohaku threw the bone weapon again. He hadn’t needed to respond. Sesshoumaru recognized the desperate resolve in the other man’s eyes. Caught off guard, the chain wrapped around his neck but with a tug it snapped. Cool metal dangled from his throat. Using the length of chain in his hand he pulled the weapon back, changing its course, and threw it back. The cycle passed just shy of Kohaku’s head cleaving a path through half a dozen trees before it lodged in a thick evergreen trunk. 

“You missed.” Kohaku watched the weapon’s trajectory. He had hit exactly where he aimed. 

Kohaku rolled out of the way of the falling trees and when the dust settled he stood, sword drawn, poised to attack. Sesshoumaru caught the blade in his hand, heedless of the metal cutting into his flesh. It would heal before it could even bleed. He yanked the sword away with one hand bringing the other hard across Kohaku’s face. The sound of flesh hitting flesh resonated in the clearing. Rivets of blood ran down Kohaku’s mouth from the broken flesh at the bridge of his nose, but he paid it no mind. 

“So you have come here to die then.” Kohaku neither confirmed or denied the accusation, but his continuing onslaught was all the answer Sesshoumaru needed. Anger bloomed in chest as he struggled to keep the poison out of his claws. 

Kohaku leapt, intent on kicking Sesshoumaru in the head but his leg was plucked out of the air. Sesshoumaru yanked the man to him, wrapping the other hand around his neck and driving them both into the ground. 

Settling his weight over Kohaku he pinned him. Using the hand around his neck he pulled him up enough to slam the back of his skull into the ground. “You come to me to kill yourself with my hands?” 

Blade scraped past bone and sunk deep into Sesshoumaru’s ribs. Blood sprayed them both as he pulled the dagger out and threw it aside, flesh already beginning to knit itself back together. 

“I never thought you this foolish.” Nose to nose he snarled through gritted teeth and clenched jaw, “or cruel.” 

The fight melted out of Kohaku and Sesshoumaru let his grip on the taijia’s neck relax minutely. With a long shuddering sigh Kohaku looked away, refusing to meet Sesshoumaru’s eyes and baring his throat. A sign of submission, whether he knew it or not. 

“Why?” Such an inappropriately benign question to ask of an answer so intricate, Sesshoumaru thought, tracing Kohaku’s jaw with a clawed thumb. “This life is not yours to waste.” 

“I’m tired Sesshoumaru. I’m just so tired.” Kohaku looked at him then. Lifetimes of pain and torment, grief and guilt, all jammed into a couple of decades. “There is something wrong with me.” 

Some of the tension left Sesshoumaru. He brought their foreheads together in a brief touch. Kohaku had come to him looking for death, and he would deny him. Perhaps counsel would be enough, although he would likely deny that too. Kohaku was too soft, too weak, for the life he had lived and the life ahead of him. 

Just as Sesshoumaru began to pull away Kohaku caught the forgotten chain around his neck and pulled. Sesshoumaru tensed, expecting another wave of attack but was met with Kohaku’s lips crashing against his own somewhere between passion and rivalry. 

The last threads of Sesshoumaru’s patience snapped. He drew back, eyes narrowed at the look of surprise and confusion on Kohaku’s face. “What do you want from me?” He asked, hand tightening around the taijiya’s throat once more. 

“I-“ Kohaku started then raised his hips, the hardness at his groin pressed against Sesshoumaru’s own growing erection. 

Sesshoumaru studid him. Wide brown panicked eyes looked back. His breath heaved and hitched either from exertion or excitement. Kohaku’s gaze shifted from panic to resolve as he arched up into Sesshoumaru again. Sesshoumaru pressed both their bodies into the dirt. 

“What do you want Kohaku?” Sesshoumaru hissed into his ear. 

He felt the taijiya’s hand working itself between them and taking a firm grip on Sesshoumaru’s cock. His eyes slid shut as a growl filled the minuscule space between them. They made quick work of cutting the ties of Kohaku’s armor and Sesshoumaru flung it to the side to join the rest of the discarded pieces of Kohaku that littered the clearing. 

Kohaku squrimed and struggled below him trying to free himself from his scaled under-armor but Sesshoumaru offered no assistance even though his claws could have sliced through like parting water. 

Warm soft flesh touched his own and his cock jumped at the feel. Kohaku’s hand pressed them together between them and he squeezed. They both thrusted themselves into Kohaku’s hand, too small to encircle both members all the way, but sufficient in holding them together so that flesh slid against flesh in a mixture of blood and sweat.

Fraction by fraction inch by inch tension started to bleed out of Sesshoumaru only to be replaced with a different kind of tension. The hand on Kohaku’s throat relaxed and a whimper escaped the man’s lips at the loss. Sesshoumaru squeezed a little harder and the wimpier was replaced with a moan. A little harder still and claws nicked his flesh. Kohaku’s back arched under him and he cried out his name as he came, Sesshoumaru’s own release not far behind. 

Sesshoumaru stood, wading back into the stream, leaving Kohaku where he lay. Blood, sweat, and spent passion making the black scales on his suit gleam in the dim moonlight. 

Kohaku was still lying there when Sesshoumaru shrugged into his clothes and armor, tucking his swords away at his hip. Once his boots were in place he looked down at Kohaku as he passed to see the deadly resolve gone, replaced with the hooded eyes of a sated lover. 

“Next time you come to me to die no sentiment or affection will stay my hand. Do you understand?” 

“Yes Lord Sesshoumaru.” Kohaku replied looking away from his steely golden gaze. 

“This will not happen again.” Sesshoumaru lied to them both, but was gone before hearing Kohaku’s reply. 

It did happen again. And again. And again. Years went by where Kohaku would seek him out to fight or fuck or for counsel. And Sesshoumaru would give him one or the other or any combination of the three. 

Rin noticed, of course she did, she had grown into a willful, whip smart and sharp tonged woman. When either or both of them returned to her smelling of sex and betrayal he always expected that sharp tongue turned to him or both but she only ever met them with understand grace and relentless love. 

And that was how things stayed for a long time until it was Sesshoumaru’s turn to seek out Kohaku, a broken daiyoukai. 

Smoke filled the sky from the fire that had been burning for the last three days blotting out the stars. Eerie red painted the otherwise black evening the color of blood. Once Sesshoumaru would have reveled in the destruction, but now the color only reminded him of his lost daughter’s eyes. Sesshoumaru approached the gate of the taijya village, throat raw from the ash that fell heavily. Burned trees and human corpses filled his lungs, coated the back of his throat, laid thick on his tongue. 

Kohaku met him at the gate, whether he had been on watch or alerted by Sesshoumaru’s roiling youki he did not know. His power whipped the wind around him. Poison leaked from his claws and it took everything in him to stay in this form. He just needed a little more time. 

“Towa” he started but grief choked him with the same ruthless efficiency as it had reduced his pride to rubble. 

“I know. We have everyone out looking for her, for all of them. We will find them Sesshoumaru.” Kohaku believed that too. Sesshoumaru could see the resolve in his eyes. The broken boy was no longer broken. He had found his purpose in bringing orphans; human, demon, and yanyou alike, to train in the taijia tradition. They slayed demons, but also wicked men. Kohaku lent an altruistic element to an otherwise bloody occupation. Sesshoumaru envied him now. 

“You will not find her. My daughter is gone.” This was the first time he had said those words aloud and they lingered bitter on his tongue. Perverted the air around them. 

Kohaku dashed tears from his eyes and Sesshoumaru envied him that as well. 

“Take her.” Sesshoumaru unwrapped the slack sleeping child from his fur and handed both his child and his legacy to Kohaku. 

She shifted a little in Kohaku’s arm but nuzzled into him and slept on oblivious to the rising winds. 

“She needs her father.” Kohaku implored and Sesshoumaru did not say, ‘this is all I have ever asked of you. I have never denied you.’ Words were useless. He knew Kohaku would understand

He reached out, cupping his remaining daughter’s chubby cheek, running his thumb along the dull tip of her ear. “She was cursed. She does not know me. She does not remember any of us.” 

“Sesshoumaru.” Kohaku reached up pressing their foreheads together, the briefest of touches that lingered far too long. 

The wind picked up again and Kohaku had had to shield his eyes from the onslaught. Sesshoumaru took one last lingering glance at his youngest daughter wrapped in white fur that was already shrinking down to fit her small body. 

“You’re going to the under world.” Kohaku held the sleeping girl closer. 

“Yesssss” Sesshoumaru hissed out through a muzzle no longer shaped for words. 

Turning away as he transformed he inhaled for the first time in days. Finally able to let go of the last shreds of his sanity as be bound to the sky, nothing left to him but power and vengeance. Shorn of his coat. A useless broken thing.


End file.
